Employee Retention Strategies

Organization HR divisions will have to work out innovative strategies to retain employees with the job market opening up giving employees more options to choose from. It includes ad hoc promotion cycles, monetary gains, creating career architecture programs, travel benefits, intellectual growth, vacation options etc.

A few of the companies have started offering restricted stock units and restructuring its hierarchical structure as employee retention strategies over the past two quarters. Some other organization has been trying to give employees opportunities to participate for projects on a global level and across specializations. Employees are given to spend 20% of their time on projects other than their primary ones.

This encourages innovation in development and cultivates inter-team communication. Organizations are trying to be innovative in crafting employee retention strategies. Besides, the traditional benefits like bonuses & financial incentives, they want to offer convincing employee value propositions. Companies are providing attractive perks like holiday travels, and even sabbaticals and higher studies subsidy more widely.

Companies are now starting to associate employee retention with age-group characteristics. For example, employee with an average age under 30 would have flexi-work arrangements, job advancements, travel abroad and jobs for spouses when relevant etc.

“Promotions and financial perks do have their attraction, but to an extent, these are knee jerk reactions from companies, and may not be sustainable in the long term. What employees truly want is to have greater depth and breadth in their job roles and functions” says Priya Chetty-Rajagopal, VP – Stanton Chase International.

Every employee is ambitious and wants to reach to the sky. The challenge for an employer in such a market is definitely employee retention. The premier companies are trying to provide employees with internship programs to test waters across different career streams available internally and move around according to their aptitude. They have also taken initiatives to provide an option for hierarchical movement and lateral growth.

Many companies are trying to reward employees through a more substantial process by dolling out a portion of company shares as restricted stock units to its mid-management employees. This may be followed up with a band restructuring program to help the junior level employees as well as employees whose salary is less compared to the positions they hold. This will create more sense of ownership towards the organization and will result in employee retention.